Last week at CTIA WOMWorld/Nokia‘s Tom Messett came up with a crazy idea. He wanted to run over a brand new T-Mobile Astound (Nokia C7) with the four ton, 15 passenger Ovi Maps Bus! I told Tom he was crazy, the phone would surely be smashed, but there was no dissuading him. The results surprised me, the Astound not only survived and but it still worked and looked great. See for yourself in this HD video that I shot on … Continue reading
WOMWORLD/Nokia lent me the new T-Mobile Astound (aka Nokia C7) which I’ve been using as my main device here at CTIA for the last 36 hours. Here are my impressions. The most exciting thing about the C7 is brand new firmware. It’s custom firmware for T-Mobile that’s “almost” PR 2.0 in that it has most of the features of of the much anticipated PR 2.0 firmware for Symbian^3. The Nokia reps I’ve spoken to insist that the new firmware isn’t … Continue reading
I’m at the big CTIA Wireless trade show in Orlando this week as the guest of WOMWorld/Nokia. The event doesn’t start until tomorrow but, thanks to a couple of huge pre-show announcements, it’s already shaping up as an especially interesting show this year. Yesterday, AT&T announced that it is acquiring T-Mobile USA. The match-up, if it passes regulatory review, would make AT&T the largest US operator. As a long time satisfied T-Mobile customer who also briefly used AT&T a few years … Continue reading
L to R; Me, Mike Maddaloni, Craig Richards, Teemu Lehtonen. At Microsoft Tech.Ed in Berlin last week, Mike Maddaloni (thehotiron.com), Craig Richards (geekcomputers.co.uk) and I sat down with Nokia’s Teemu Lehtonen. The topic was Symbian security, something Teemu knows a thing or two about having worked primarily in that area for most of the 12 years he’s been with Nokia. Teemu outlined the Symbian security model which he called the most secure in the industry. It starts with the hardware. … Continue reading
On my recent trip to Berlin for Tech.Ed I was really impressed with the performance, stability and ease of use of the latest 3.06 Beta of Ovi Maps. I’d used it a little before the trip and knew it was pretty good and that it could work offline. I though that might come in handy in Germany where I my T-Mobile pay-as-you-go SIM wouldn’t roam. So before I left San Francisco I loaded the Berlin/Brandenberg map set to my N8 … Continue reading
I just got back from Berlin where I attended Microsoft Tech.Ed Europe along with Mike Maddaloni (thehotiron.com) and Craig Richards (geekcomputers.co.uk) as the guests of WOMWorld/Nokia. Tech.Ed is a series of annual conferences that Microsoft holds around the world. It’s primarily a technical training event but there are also high level keynote sessions covering Microsoft and partner’s products, services and strategies and a large Expo floor where many companies have booths promoting their development tools and enterprise products and services. … Continue reading
I’ll be at the Microsoft Tech.Ed Conference in Berlin Tuesday and Wednesday as the guest of WOMWorld and Nokia. I was really surprised when I got an email from WOMWorld a little over a week ago offering to send me to Berlin for the conference. Totally unexpected and wonderful. I’m looking forward to seeing Berlin for the first time too. I’m not sure what Nokia has in store for me at Tech-Ed. They are a sponsor of the Microsoft conference, … Continue reading
At the Sprint Developer Conference today, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse (image above) introduced what the operator is calling the “Browser-VAS” ecosystem. It’s supposed to let developers create and monetize browser based apps. Browser-VAS is built around Openwave‘s Integra cloud service. Hopefully, the service will have a more user friendly name when it launches in the first half of 2011. The apps appear in a toolbar that users can optionally add to the browser. They can then “install” free and paid … Continue reading